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We often use loose material compositions in our classroom as a way for children to tell us what they know.
We set out various materials, stones, gems, paper and sticks.
These representations are not permanent.
We take a picture and then the material gets sorted back and the activity is ready for the next child.

This summer has been an incredible journey into the world of art.
It started with a family trip to the Harn museum that inspired explorations into color,lines and shapes, which led to the discovery of different mediums and techniques.We read books about famous artists like, Vincent Van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe and Jackson Pollack.
Somewhere around mid summer we provoked the idea of finding a way to show our art to our families .We talked about our trip to the museum and the children were excited to make an "art show" for their parents and friends.
Our art show was a huge success.
We documented the work that the children did with the intention of making our summer visible to our parents. This type of documentation lets those not in our classroom day to day understand our path; where we started and why and how we ended up where we did.
Our art show was not only an opportunity to show off our beautiful works of creativity, it was also a way to show the children that we val…

Our final Halloween activity in the preschool is to carve our jack-o-lantern. It's our tradition to have each child draw a design that they would like to see carved into our classroom pumpkin.

We talk about how we can't use everyone's design so we need to figure out a way to pick one. This is how we introduce the idea of voting. The designs are numbered. We leave the children's names out of the voting process to avoid hurt feelings.

The best way that we have found to include the children in the carving process is to use golf tees and a block as a hammer. It's a great, safe fine motor skill activity.